Perception 2

Psychology: Experiments on Perception by Peter Lafferty The great cookie-cutter experiment One of the basic questions examined by psychology is: 'How do humans perceive things?' Perception is the process of forming a coherent picture of the world. But how does perception work? Until the 1960s, a rather simplistic view was taken of perception. The organs of perception – the eyes and ears, for example – were considered as passive receptors of data from the surroundings. It …

…light varies greatly. Most mammals cannot distinguish different colours, whereas some birds can detect the polarization of light. Many insects can see light in the ultraviolet range, which is beyond our spectrum, while snakes can form images of infrared radiation (radiant heat). In many animals, light is also detected by another organ, the pineal body, which 'sees' light filtering through the skull, and measures the length of the day to keep track of the seasons.